DNC Oppo for 2020: Local and Policy-Focused

In  Defying the Odds, we discuss opposition research.  The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

Heidi Przybyla at USA Today:

Responding to criticism that Democrats were too focused on Trump’s temperament and personal attributes during Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, the party’s main organizing arm says it’s making a major expansion of its opposition research team that will be “hyper-focused” on the impact of Trump’s policies on local communities.

A team of several dozen staffers have compiled an archive of thousands of documents obtained through local news and Freedom of Information Act requests that will be used to spotlight promises Trump made during visits to specific communities — and to “put a human face” on what’s happened since then.

Those include promises made to welders and pipefitters in Virginia Beach and Newtown, Pennsylvania, construction workers around Tampa, Florida and seniors struggling with high drug prices in Reno, Nevada. The DNC did not provide estimates on how much money they planned to spend on an effort that is planned to continue through the 2020 election.

While Democratic presidential candidates compete for the nomination, the DNC will bypass traditional primary states like Iowa to get a head start in targeting voters in battleground states Clinton lost, including Florida, Arizona, Michigan and Georgia.

Sample work:

The Best People, Continued Again

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's approach to governing.  The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

The choice of servants is of no little importance to a prince, and they are good or not according to the discrimination of the prince. And the first opinion which one forms of a prince, and of his understanding, is by observing the men he has around him; and when they are capable and faithful he may always be considered wise, because he has known how to recognize the capable and to keep them faithful. But when they are otherwise one cannot form a good opinion of him, for the prime error which he made was in choosing them.

-- Machiavelli

Catherine Rampell at WP:

Moore is a career political operative whose singular motivation is helping Republicans cut taxes. In service of that goal, he sometimes fabricates economic factoids entirely, including during a Thursday radio interview in which he falsely claimed that wages just began to grow for the first time in 20 years. Usually though, he either cherry-picks or misrepresents (real) government data — e.g., by not adjusting figures for inflation, or claiming that a decline in soybean prices driven by China’s decision to stop buying from American farmers means that prices across the U.S. economy overall are falling. (They are not.)

Cain, on the other hand, does not appear to have sufficient facility with economic statistics to know which cherries to pick. During a recent episode of his Web show, he appeared genuinely confused by the differences between, say, jobs vacant and jobs filled. (This is arguably an important thing to know if you’re on the Federal Reserve Board, where half the legal mandate concerns maximizing the number of jobs filled.)

But when all else fails — that is, when they run out of real numbers to spin or mischaracterize — both Moore and Cain have a tendency to invoke Trump-style data trutherism: that is, to simply claim the official government data are phony.

Jon Swaine and David Smith at The Guardian:

A court official accompanied by four police officers had to break into the home of Stephen Moore, Donald Trump’s pick for the Federal Reserve board, after he repeatedly failed to pay debts to his ex-wife.

The group used a locksmith to force their way into Moore’s house in Virginia in May 2013, according to court filings. They were there to prepare the property for a court-ordered sale in order to raise $330,000 that Moore owed his ex-wife after their divorce.

When the court official telephoned Moore on her way out to ask where she should leave the new key to his home, Moore “was very argumentative” and “denied that we were in his house”, the official, Kyle Skopic, said in a June 2013 motion.

The court records were reopened to the public by a judge on Friday, in response to legal action by the Guardian and other media. They had been temporarily sealed this week following the publication of reports about Moore’s past financial and legal problems.

The Week:

Meet Herman Cain: Federal Reserve Board of Governors nominee. Former Republican presidential candidate. CEO. And professional grifter?

Cain, whom President Trump recently tapped as a nominee for a spot on the Fed's Board, has reportedly turned his sponsored mailing list — which he has been profiting off since his failed presidential bid in 2012 — into a "haven for scammy emails," promoting worthless penny stocks and dubious "moneymaking strategies," according to Media Matters:

Trump Fed pick Herman Cain sent this April 4 sponsored email, which suggested that readers could "turn $1,000 into $800,000" using a certain "moneymaking strategy." pic.twitter.com/p1pLGuNjht

— Eric Hananoki (@ehananoki) April 9, 2019

Demographic Gaps and the House

In Defying the Odds, we discuss demographic gaps in the 2016 election.     The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

Mike Allen at Axios:

Chris Krueger of Cowen Washington Group has a stark reminder of one of the biggest 2020 issues not named Donald Trump:

• There are 13 House Republicans who are women (out of 197 — 7%).
• There are 14 House Republicans named Greg or Mike.

...
Hillary Clinton won women 54% to 42%, while Trump took 53% of white women voters.

In last year's midterms, the WashPost's Dan Balz saw a "revolt among suburban women ... that played out in district after district."
...

Another GOP impediment in suburbs is racial diversity, as the country grows more non-white. National Journal's Josh Kraushaar frames it bluntly:

• "As Democrats have rapidly diversified their ranks in the last several elections, Republicans have grown more homogeneous."
• "Only 11 of the 255 Republican members of Congress are nonwhite."

Trump and the Rule of Law

In Defying the Odds, we discuss Trump's dishonesty and his record of disregarding the rule of law.   The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms.

At NYT, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Maggie Haberman, Michael D. Shear and Eric Schmitt report on the firing of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen:

The president called Ms. Nielsen at home early in the mornings to demand that she take action to stop migrants from entering the country, including doing things that were clearly illegal, such as blocking all migrants from seeking asylum. She repeatedly noted the limitations imposed on her department by federal laws, court settlements and international obligations.

The Ways and Means Committee has requested Trump's tax returns. Jonathan Chait at New York:

The law governing this matter is unusually clear. The Internal Revenue Code states, “Upon written request from the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives, the chairman of the Committee on Finance of the Senate, or the chairman of the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Secretary shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request.” This law has been used to examine tax returns of high-placed political officials. It was enacted in order to let Congress examine financial conflicts of interest by the administration, and forced the disclosure of a president’s tax returns (Richard Nixon).

News accounts describe this law as “obscure” or “little used,” which it is — but only because presidential candidates who receive a major-party nomination have habitually published their tax returns. It is a very strong norm that has made the law unnecessary. But the fact that the norm is backstopped by a law strengthens rather than weakens the case for enforcing it.

Trump recently told reporters, “From what I understand, the law’s 100 percent on my side.” The president declined to support this strident interpretation with any references to legal texts or other precedent, which is hardly surprising. Somewhat more unusually, his supporters have likewise failed to explain why the plain-text meaning of the law does not actually apply.

Republicans Keep Losing on Taxes, Continued

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the tax issue in the 2016 campaign.  The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. and explains why the Trump tax cut backfired on Republicans.

John J. Harwood at CNBC:

No wonder the 2017 Republican tax cut remains so unpopular — the vast majority of Americans don’t think they got one at all.

As the annual IRS filing deadline of April 15 approaches, just 17% believe their own taxes will go down, the NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll found. By contrast, 28% believe they’ll pay more, 27% expect to pay about the same and 28% don’t know enough to say.

That helps explain why the tax cut provided so little ballast for the GOP as Democrats recaptured control of the House in November’s midterm elections. Pew Research polling last month found that the tax cut remains underwater politically, with 36% of Americans expressing approval and 49% disapproval.

In reality, 8 in 10 Americans stood to receive tax cuts in 2018 under the law, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Yet the cuts for most taxpayers are so small that many didn’t notice.

Republicans Keep Losing on Taxes

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the tax issue in the 2016 campaign.  The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. and explains why the Trump tax cut backfired on Republicans,

Zach Montellaro at Politico:

According to the Wesleyan Media Project, taxes were the most popular issue in pro-GOP ads (promoting the tax law as a middle-class tax cut) and the second-most popular issue for pro-Democratic ads (saying the law was a raw deal for most and a payout for the rich).

Opinions on the Trump tax law have more or less crystalized. A new Pew Research Center poll found that 49 percent of Americans disapprove of the tax law, while 36 percent approve — almost no change from a January 2018 Pew poll. If anything, Republicans have gotten a bit less enthusiastic about the bill, with the number who strongly approve dropping 14 points from January 2018 to last month (overall GOP support is roughly the same).

And expect taxes to be a major issue in 2020. About 60 percent of Americans feel that corporations and the wealthy don’t pay their fair share of taxes, and it bothers them “a lot.” Just 32 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners say the tax system is very or moderately fair — partially explaining the emphasis Democratic hopefuls like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have placed on instituting new taxes on the ultra-rich. Compare this to 64 percent of Republican and Republican leaners who think the American tax system is fair, and who are still broadly supportive of the president’s tax policy.

Biden Is Not a Great Candidate

In Defying the Odds, we discuss the early stages of the 2016 campaign, when many candidates were unknowns.  The update  -- just published --includes a chapter on the 2018 midterms. We are now in the early stages of the 2020 race.

Barney Frank on Joe Biden, 2015:

“Joe is his own worst enemy. He’s a very bright guy, very good values. But he just — he can’t keep his mouth shut or his hands to himself.”

 Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns at NYT:

Mr. Biden has faced accusations from multiple women who came forward to complain that his penchant for close physical contact made them feel uneasy. Rival Democrats demanded that he account for his treatment of the women, and President Trump lobbed taunts that offered a preview of how he might attack Mr. Biden in a 2020 general election.

It was a multiday crisis that seemed entirely foreseeable, given that Mr. Biden’s physical touching occurred over many years, often in public. But despite almost five decades in the political arena, Mr. Biden, 76, did not have an agile, fully staffed campaign in place to confront it.

He issued three statements and one online video attempting to explain his conduct, only to joke about the issue in a speech to a union conference Friday. Afterward, he gave an ambivalent response to reporters who asked if he was sorry, acknowledging that he would have to change his behavior but apologizing only for the fact that he “didn’t understand more” about the implications of his conduct.

Mr. Biden showed no evident regret about his wait-and-wait-some-more strategy, explaining coyly that he would “give everybody else their day, then I get a shot.”
But Mr. Biden’s eventual announcement now seems fated to fall in the shadow of the recent allegations and the progressive concerns he has so far declined to address. Far from remaining above the fray, Mr. Biden will enter the campaign as bruised as any of the 16 other candidates already in the race.

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